hariseldon

Best as I can gather -- the various levels of Amazon:
Marketplace -- store owns the product, sets the price, ships the product -- contracts with Amazon to list the product for sale (I'm don;t know if there is some sort of fee/item). When it sells, Amazon is being used like a fulltime Buy it Now Ebay and takes a cut of every sale, but never touches the product. Like ebay they provide some protections, but are strictly a middleman allowing independent stores to use them as a display tent.

Fulfilled by Amazon -- somebody else who owns the merchandise and controls the price sells it, Amazon allows them to use Amazon Warehouse to store and ship and takes a bigger cut of the sale price for their services. If there's an issue, the Store still is responsible other the shipping issues though Amazon seems to get a bigger say if solutions if there is a problem

Sold by Amazon -- Amazon buys or contracts to buy products from the distributor or wholesale warehouse like Alliance or Allied Vaughn. Amazon owns the product, sells the product, controls the product, ships the product and takes all the profit. If there is a problem, Amazon deals with it directly and I assume they have a conversation with the origination company and possibly some contract to sell-back unsold merchandise after a certain length of time.

Warner doesn't even appear to have any capability to act as a store to sell items direct to consumers so all their sales are done via end-retailers who do the selling. I'm assuming all their business is handled through Wholesalers like Alliance and Ingram and whatever hybrid Producer/Wholesale/Distributor like Allied Vaughn. After Warner produces/encodes/etc the product and places the printing order to Technicolor, I don't know if they even touch the discs at after that or if the items go straight from Mexico to Alliance Warehouses or if Warner has their own distribution center with accept the discs from TC and then moves to Alliance, etc. I also don't know if Amazon acts as their own wholesaler and accepts stock direct from Technicolor or if all their Media is sourced through Alliance, etc though I think it's closer to the latter.

MooMooMooMoo

Until recently, (when explained on this thread), I had thought Warner was running the WAC site. They certainly made it look that way.

Universal Music has a similar site; as does Rhino Records (division of Warner/EMI, LOL!). I don't know if they are contracted out or run by Uni & Warner; though Rhino was around as an idie for a long time before the acquisition by Warner. One thing to think about: With the internet, the labels could easily cut out the stores (middlemen) & increase profits. I'm not saying this would be a good thing, but if no one is doing it, I am surprised.

Red Hood

I missed this comment. Yes, it is Warnermedia/AT&T's fault for what's going on. WBShop/Araca maybe a third party, but it was AT&T that cut them off, the same way they laid off George Feltenstein at the beginning of the year. If you don't know by now, AT&T has been in a cost cutting measure since they took over, using the pandemic as an excuse for their reassessment of the company's departments and elimination of the ones they believe are expendable. The fulfillment warehouse deal with Araca was one of them. They feel that Amazon can do what Araca was doing in a cheaper way, so they made the cut, in the process giving a big fuck you to customers that placed orders last month. This is what corporations do and this is why I blamed them, not Araca for the debacle.

As for my order, I received it out of nowhere yesterday, without receiving any shipping notification. The funny thing is that I received a delivery notification once it was left on my porch. Everything I ordered was there, so it was a great deal after all.

hariseldon

Araca was a screwup store before WBShop, they improved a bit after gaining Warner, but botched the Nov sale before being 'cutoff'
ATT/Warner pulled their licence going forward, but didn't cut off their access to the Fulfillment warehouse, didn't shut down WbShop, didn't shut down their CS ability to answer emails and phone calls and customer compaints, and certainly didn't cause Araca to return to its
non-existent CS of pre-WBShop days.

Araca didn't screwup b/c that were booted to the curb, they were booted the curb b/c they were a terribly run store.

MooMooMooMoo

I had no idea AT & T has bought Warner. Warner Bros. Music also, or just film?

TheBang

Just FYI, this is not relevant to how Warner is operating on Amazon, but Amazon actually allows some vendors to ship directly to the customer yet still have the product listed as "Fulfilled by Amazon" if they meet certain criteria, including being able to meet Prime fulfillment shipping times. It's called Seller Fulfilled Prime.

Why So Blu?

My Alfred Hitchcock collection from WAC finally came in today (from Amazon for $ 25 and some change). Took about a month on that one, but who cares. It's here.

Red Hood

The buck stops at Warner/AT&T. They hired a company to fulfill their products and when Arcana didn't do that properly, the responsibility falls once again on the company producing the product, specially since they are the ones that are in control of the transition period.

AT&T purchased everything WarnerMedia owned in 2020 and merged as a single entity. This includes Warner Music, the film division, all the TV channels (TNT, TBS, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, etc.), DC Comics, Looney Tunes, DirectTV, and every other company that was under the WB umbrella.

dex14

Warner Music hasn’t been under (at the time) TimeWarner since 2004.

Red Hood

You are completely right. Warner Music is owned by Access Industries, which had them go public once again last year.

MooMooMooMoo

So is it A, T & T, or Access? I've been out of the industry too long!

Red Hood

Access owns Warner Music. AT&T owns the rest including Warnermedia which includes, WB films, DC Comics, DirectTV, Looney Tunes, TNT, TBS, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network among others.

MooMooMooMoo

For some reason I thought Warner & EMI had merged (although maybe they did ^ then access bought 'em both.....)

laidbacklarkin

Finally received my order today

PhantomStranger

Yeah, my shipment came in Saturday.

DVD Josh

Both my orders finally arrived. About a month in total. Not terrible, hell, better than Shout lol.

MooMooMooMoo

You are more patient than I!

Overpar

Finally got a shipping notice yesterday. Should arrive tomorrow.

clckworang

And I finally got a shipping notice yesterday, just hours after finally emailing and asking for a status update. I guess I really am getting this order!

Classic Films

There is a new WBshop.com that is run by a different 3rd party and doesn't sell media, as of when I am writing this .

wbshop.com

Snow Commerce, Inc. is the seller of all merchandise and is solely responsible for all aspects of your purchase.

laidbacklarkin

Any insider information on if there will be WAC promotions in the future ? This label is one of my coveted ones and those 4 for $44 sales are deeply missed. Haven't seen any sale either on Amazon or DD since the WBshop closed

MooMooMooMoo

During the last sale they said it would be the last one.

hariseldon

Have not heard of any sort of Archive Sale on any site, but folks are hoping Warner allows something for Nov/Dec holiday like they have in the past.

Amazon has had a select groups of items drop to $10-12 through the summer, but just a few here and there and not a Catalog sale. 10-15 seem to drop to the $15 range

DD did have a decent sale most of June with most of the 90+Day old items that were in stock 30-35% off (a few up to 40%) and the usual 10-15% codes. The problem was the sheer number of Backorder title, esp the more recent items that weren't part of the last 4/40

In the past in March, June or July and Nov, Deep Discount would drop the majority of WAC up to 37-40% (excluding new items and few older items) -- that was generally the same month WBShop sales would run.

Everybody is waiting to see what November holds, but the Backordered/OOS titles is even longer right now and esp the 2020/2021 releases. The time I looked at the BD list, a little over a third were OOS and well over half the 'recent' titles

laidbacklarkin

Thank you for this information. I did notice the random price drops on Amazon on a few titles that weren't too compelling - bulk of the ones I want have almost all the while been regular priced. The backorders and OOS statuses are certainly not encouraging. Will keenly look forward to any holiday offerings

MooMooMooMoo

With Amazon taking their 15-25% cut, I don't see any possibility of 4 for $44.